An Improved Dining Room and Dinner Party!

When my mom was visiting 2 weeks ago, she and LL started the project of painting in the dining room. They primed the whole room while I was at work, and then we all spent Saturday painting. This proved to be a challenge, because the color we picked out ended up looking nothing like the paint chip once it was on our walls, which sent us back to Lowes for another long, drawn out session of picking out a paint color. We finally found one we thought would do the trick, but it didn't have texture to it, and we needed a textured paint to help cover the weird texture and cracks in the room. So we bought a texture finish, only to find out that the finish cut the amount of coverage of the paint in half, so then we had to to BACK to Lowes for more paint... anyway, we finished the main wall color, but not the trim, and then this past weekend I was able to finish the trim in between canning tomatoes. It ended up being great timing, too, because we have hosted our first two dinner parties this week! My great friends from college, Matt and Becky, and their two kids, came for dinner on Tuesday night. They were driving back up to their home in Mass. and stopped by for dinner. We had a great visit and it was so fun to see them! And then today, my wonderful husband got up and cleaned and prepared a great birthday dinner for me, and invited the extended family over. The meal was fabulous-- smoked turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, homemade rolls, spiced pears (from our tree) and apples, tomatoes and mozzarella cheese balls, and ice cream cake for dessert! It was so thoughtful and so tasty!

So here was the dining room before we moved in:



Here is the room "during:"
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And here we are today at the dinner. We still need some wall decorations, but other than that we are done!